


Earth and Dust

by chess_ka



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Bifur-centric, Brain Damage, Gen, Recovery, Ur Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 16:46:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4187340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chess_ka/pseuds/chess_ka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a slow process, putting yourself back together. It takes time to rebuild.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earth and Dust

Bifur's last thought as his skull shattered was one of surprise: _It doesn't hurt._

He wakes to light, and noise, and pain.

The noise is the worst. Dwarves and men surround him, faces pale and grime-smeared, their eyes afraid. None of them say a word that Bifur can understand, their harsh voices a jumble of nonsense sounds. He tries to move and they hold him down, powerful hands on his shoulders and noise in his ears like falling rocks and roaring rivers and screaming, dying boar and something is _wrong wrong wrong_

*

He wakes to darkness, and quiet, and pain.

The quiet is the worst. He finds himself sitting in a small room, staring at the dancing fire. The room is familiar, but not. He looks out of his eyes at the familiar, unfamiliar room, at his broad, scarred hands sitting useless on his knees. The stone under his feet does not speak to him. He had always heard it before.

He has no idea where he is, or how much time has passed.

There are two other dwarves with him, sitting close by on either side. He knows them, and yet he doesn't. He knows their faces but not their names, cannot recall how he came to know them. One of them touches his hand, grips his fingers. Bifur tries to grip back, but his hand lies useless. The two dwarves speak to him gently, confused sounds that hold no meaning. Their eyes are afraid, and everything that shattered inside Bifur seems to crumble further.

*

The axe in his forehead is a crude weight. Orcs take no pride in their metalwork; there is no balance or beauty or carefully carven runes. It is brutal and ugly, and it has made Bifur the same.

Memories begin to surface, like fragments of shattered glass. He slowly regains some use of his hands, but where they were once nimble they now cannot even button his jerkin, much less hold a whittling knife or play a pipe, or dance their way through Iglishmêk. His voice, once quick to laughter and song, has crumbled to dust.

He now knows the two dwarves are his cousins. He spends a day digging in the wreckage of his mind, searching for them. He finds their names, two dusty pearls of knowledge. _Bofur_ , he tells himself. _Bombur._ He lifts his hands, tries to fold his thick fingers into shapes of meaning, but nothing comes. He swallows his frustration and tucks their names behind his tongue for safe-keeping.

Bofur always talks to him, the nonsense words streaming out of him as though he isn't even aware of it. Sometimes the sound is the rough rumble of rock, of mining picks and stamping feet. Sometimes it is rolling, wind and grass and hills. He sings often, hopping and stamping as he does so. Other times he plays his pipe. His face is smiling, lines creasing around his mouth, but his eyes are sad.

Bombur is quiet, and Bifur likes that. He doesn't seem to mind that Bifur's words have fled. Bombur sits beside him, grinding herbs or skinning rabbits or shelling peas, and he lets his warm silence wrap around them. The pain eases, sometimes.

Occasionally there is a dwarrowdam, with a kind face and a dimpled smile. Bombur loves her, and Bifur wishes he could remember her name. One day she visits with a root vegetable stew, and it's the first meal not to make Bifur nauseous. She plays the flute, and Bifur's fingers itch for his pipe.

*

More memories filter through. The rhythm of picks and voices in a dark mine. A boar hunt. His mother’s small smile and roughened hands. His father’s tuneless whistling. Delicate wooden toys and his own voice.

Grief and fury rise in his throat, choking him. When he can breathe again, their chairs lie broken on the stone floor.

*

He can see the strain on his cousins. He can see how they count their coins, faces pinched. He can see how they murmur together, anxious eyes glancing over at him. Bofur leaves for the mines earlier each day, and comes home looking more and more exhausted. He stops playing his pipe. Bombur takes his wares to market whenever he can, and spends more time staring at their sparse food supplies, biting his lip. Bifur can see the desperation in Bofur's eyes when he looks into his face and speaks nonsense that clearly means _come back to us_ and _we can't keep doing this._

He rages against the inside of his mind, throwing himself against the side of his shattered skull. He's rebuilt enough of himself to know what he's lost. He was stone but now he is soil, trodden and beaten and helpless. He lifts his ruined, shaking hands and tries to force words from them, but the signs are gone. Bofur's eyes are bright as he wraps Bifur's hands in his own, strong and sure and warm. He says something, and Bifur knows he means _it's all right._ It's a lie.

*

Dwarves are workers. They are craftsmen and miners and builders. So was Bifur, once.

He cannot burden his cousins any more.

He makes his way away from the crumbling mountains of Ered Luin, falling into a rhythm of heavy footsteps; he had forgotten what the open air felt like. He closes his eyes, listens to the ground beneath his feet, but it is quiet. Even the voice of the earth is lost to him, now. His head aches, and he has nothing but the two names tucked behind his tongue.

Darkness is falling, and he stops. He is parched and hungry, and surprised to be so. The sparse woods of the foot hills feel familiar, and he closes his fingers, feeling he should be carrying something. A spear? Why? He blinks, looking around.

Something touches his shoulder, and he spins, fists clenched. It is Bofur, eyes wide, face pale. _What are you doing?_ his not-words say. _We were worried._ He cups Bifur's jaw in his hands, fingers tangling in his beard, searching his face as though looking for a wound. Silent laughter fills Bifur's mouth like ash. He's always wounded and shattered now; Bofur won't get him back, not truly.

The shoring crumbles inside Bifur's ribcage all at once. His knees hit the dirt and he buries his fingers into the rich soil as his shoulders shake and tears scald his eyes. He presses his hands desperately into the soil, wanting to bury himself down into it. Dwarves go back to the stone when they die, it is said. He doesn't want to die but he doesn't want to _be_ , not like this.

The soil is cool under his palms and Bofur's arm is warm over his shoulders, his breath soft against his tangled hair. He shakes and shakes and feels that he really will break apart, the cracks in his skull splitting the rest of his body until he falls into dust in Bofur's arms.

“Sshhh,” Bofur is whispering. “Ssshhh, _maimdimi,_ Bifur.”

The words settle clearly in his mind. He freezes, stares through blurred eyes at his hands clenched in dirt. He breathes in. His lungs fill with the scent of rich soil and solid earth and Bofur's pipeweed.

“Bofur,” he gasps, wrenching the word from behind his tongue and flinging it desperately into the world. “ _Bofur_.”

He looks up, and Bofur is beaming, and his eyes are joyful. He pulls Bifur close, folding around him as though he is trying to push him all back together.“ _Maidmî,_ ” he says, and Bifur understands.

He is just earth and dust. But when he breathes his lungs fill, and his voice has pushed into the light like a new, ragged flower. Darkness spills over the mountain ridges, and Bofur takes his hand and leads him home.

**Author's Note:**

> Maimdimi – be comforted
> 
> Maidmî – welcome back (literally, be welcomed)


End file.
